‘Race row’ West Yorkshire detective arrested

Det Ch Insp Elizabeth Belton.

Published:00:00Updated:08:07Friday 01 April 2016

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A senior West Yorkshire detective under investigation by her own force for allegedly making racist comments at a Christmas party has been arrested and suspended from duty on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

Detective Chief Inspector Liz Belton is one of three West Yorkshire Police officers arrested last month. She is on bail along with a female Pc and a male Pc.

Ms Belton, one of the force’s most senior investigators, was also arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office and computer misuse offences, West Yorkshire Police revealed.

The force confirmed the arrest just a week after the Yorkshire Post revealed that Ms Belton had been placed on restricted duties after allegedly using racist language at a work Christmas party.

She was made the subject of a misconduct investigation by the force.

The alleged remarks are understood to have been made at a Christmas party held by the force’s Homicide and Major Enquiry Team.

In West Yorkshire Police’s statement last week revealing that Ms Belton had been placed on restricted duties, no mention was made of the fact that she had since been suspended from duty as a result of her arrest. Before she was suspended, she was leading the new enquiry into the historic murder of Wakefield teenager Elsie Frost in 1965.

It is not the first time Ms Belton, the former head of North East Leeds CID, has been the subject of an internal investigation.

In 2012, an enquiry was launched after she and a colleague, Chief Superintendent Ian Whitehouse, were confronted by one of their partners at a gym in Killingbeck police station in Leeds.